NOBODY DOMINATED THE SPRINTS
5
It’s usually easy to pick the best sprinter of the year – find the guy who won the most stages at the Tour de France, and he’s probably your man. Marcel Kittel in 2017, Mark Cavendish in 2016, André Greipel in 2015, Kittel again in 2014 and 2013…
Not so fast. The sprinter of 2018 was Elia Viviani, and he didn’t even ride in France. Subjectively and objectively, the Italian’s 18 wins, which included four at the Giro and three at the Vuelta, trump those of Dylan Groenewegen and his Quick-Step teammate Fernando Gaviria, who each won a pair at the Tour. Groenewegen has a good case to be the year’s best sprinter – he won 14 times in 2018. And you can argue that Viviani’s opposition in Italy and Spain wasn’t anywhere near as deep as at the Tour. But Viviani’s other wins, outside the grand tours, also stand up to scrutiny. He won the closest thing that the calendar has to a pure sprinters’ Classic these days – the EuroEyes Cyclassics. There’s a quirk of the cycling season that some of the deepest sprinting fields of the year show up at the Dubai and Abu Dhabi Tours early in the season, and Viviani won three stages across these two races, against Groenewegen, Kittel, Cavendish, Ewan, Kristoff and more. Viviani should line up at the Tour in 2019 as Deceuninck-QuickStep’s sprint leader, with Gaviria having gone to UAE. It will be an opportunity to confirm the opinion that he really is currently the fastest sprinter in the world.